This one-year-old lavender at Foxbury Farm will be ready for harvest in a few days’ time. Recent hot weather has accelerated the plants’ production of essential oil. Once ‘dried’ and matured the oil will be used in the Mitchell and Peach range.

Last week we planted our newest lavender plantation – 90,000 ambitious little bushes no taller than a finger in height. They are of the Mailette variety (lavandula angustifolia, or ‘true lavender’) and will provide us with an annual bounty of pure, sweet-smelling essential oil for many years to come.

This moody shot was taken just after dawn yesterday, as we prepared the ground for a new lavender plantation at Foxbury Farm. The landscape may look somewhat monochrome, but come in summers to come it will be filled with scent and colour. Ninety thousand baby lavender plants will be bedded in here over the next few days.

Our cobnuts, whose ground shell is the secret ingredient of our new Kentish Cobnut Scrub, are now being harvested. There are several plantations (or ‘plats’) on the estate, some dating back over 50 years. The Kentish Cobnut, a cultivated form of wild hazlenut, is unique to our locality. The shell makes a particularly fine exfoliant, and the nuts themselves make the most delicious seasonal snack. Watch our for a cobnut serving suggestion from Xanthe Clay in the next Foxbury Gazette and, to learn more about this singular nut, you can visit the website of the Kentish Cobnut Association.

This weekend’s harvest was unexpectedly bountiful. In spite of variable conditions throughout the spring, our precious true lavender (lavandula angustifolia, seen above) has produced our second-highest essential oil yield ever. The oils will now be ‘dried’ and aged, before being blended by our perfumer with other fine natural essences and used in Mitchell and Peach products.

For our recent shoot we collaborated with Jaeger, the luxury British fashion house. In this image, Chloe Mitchell wears a ‘Houndstooth Print’ dress from its summer collection. Like Mitchell and Peach, Jaeger has a distinguished heritage and a meticulous eye for quality and detail.

The shoot, images from which will be released this autumn, marks the fact that Mitchell and Peach formulas now include pure honey gathered from hives on the Mitchell estate. The images were taken by Mark Harrison, an award-winning photographer whose subjects have included former US President Bill Clinton and actors John Hurt and Natascha McElhone. www.jaeger.co.uk; www.markharrisonphotography.com